What movies are you watching?

[lennytheweedwhacker]

It's interesting that The Coens have so many movies with such warm, interesting, endearing characters, but also a handful of movies with truly unpleasant people presented unpleasantly that are torture to watch. It's almost like they want to punish their audience.

my reading of the coens is that they're misanthropes, and that even the most endearing of their characters are in fact dupes of various stripes. not all, but most.

so there is a political valence to their stuff that is quote/unquote bad. i can suspend that shortcoming because they're very good writers and make good pictures.

to your original q. I find the pastiche in hail caesar to be lots of fun & as "authentic" as can be hoped for, in a movie like this. it's filled with great scenes. why? if I find them funny. and though I never found much use for his thinking, i liked seeing one of the more visible exponents of the frankfurt school in a hollywood movie. clooney has been a wonderful comic instrument for them and he is here, too, and this movie adds josh brolin to their character repertoire of capable idiots. no grand argument. just plays to my predictions and pretensions

Well said. As always!

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[BurtReynolds]

Biohazard 4D-Executer

Not good!

[doug rr]

a couple nights in a row now watching a total bore fest of a 3 hour movie..last night was Blonde...meh

[tree_]

Biohazard 4D-Executer

Not good!

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Saw
Predestination

[BurtReynolds]

a couple nights in a row now watching a total bore fest of a 3 hour movie..last night was Blonde...meh

You watched the whole thing?

[VinylGuy]

On The Count Of Three.

Yeah, a very very minor movie thats trying so hard to be deep it gets really boring. Christopher Abbot of course is great.

[Anders]

The Spectacular Now

[Jorge]

to your original q. I find the pastiche in hail caesar to be lots of fun & as "authentic" as can be hoped for, in a movie like this. it's filled with great scenes. why? if I find them funny. and though I never found much use for his thinking, i liked seeing one of the more visible exponents of the frankfurt school in a hollywood movie. clooney has been a wonderful comic instrument for them and he is here, too, and this movie adds josh brolin to their character repertoire of capable idiots. no grand argument. just plays to my predictions and pretensions

I agree. It's colorful, it's funny, the music is great, the "villains" are a group of communist screenwriters. It's a great time. I prefer it over several Coens films, to me it's nowhere near their worst. I know it's controversial but I saw it then (and still see it) as a bounce back in quality from the widely loved Inside Llewyn Davis. As far as unlikeable characters, that's never been a problem for me. I've never felt like I needed to personally like the characters in order to enjoy the movie

[Anders]

The Spectacular Now

Think Miles Teller was really good in this. Fairly straightforward story, but it went a bit different than I had imagined anyway.

[Anders]

Inside Llewyn Davis is pretty cool. It’s on my list of remaining 2013 movies. I’ve got 10 rewatches, thst I’ve all rated highly previously, and 17 I’ve never seen before.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

to your original q. I find the pastiche in hail caesar to be lots of fun & as "authentic" as can be hoped for, in a movie like this. it's filled with great scenes. why? if I find them funny. and though I never found much use for his thinking, i liked seeing one of the more visible exponents of the frankfurt school in a hollywood movie. clooney has been a wonderful comic instrument for them and he is here, too, and this movie adds josh brolin to their character repertoire of capable idiots. no grand argument. just plays to my predictions and pretensions

I agree. It's colorful, it's funny, the music is great, the "villains" are a group of communist screenwriters. It's a great time. I prefer it over several Coens films, to me it's nowhere near their worst. I know it's controversial but I saw it then (and still see it) as a bounce back in quality from the widely loved Inside Llewyn Davis. As far as unlikeable characters, that's never been a problem for me. I've never felt like I needed to personally like the characters in order to enjoy the movie

Ditto for the most part on the last point. And with those kind of Coens’ characters they are always entertaining.

What’s your bottom 5 Coen joints?

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[BurtReynolds]

The communist cell of writers was the only thing I really liked about it, but they aren't in the movie much. The only time I laughed was when the cowboy guy says "so it's communists."

Outside of that, everyone else is hamming it up in the worst ways. Clooney is awful. Everything looks cheap and ugly (which I assume was on purpose, but showing Hollywood as fake and gaudy isn't very interesting these days).

Maybe if they would have concentrated on making the movie about the hero movie exec vs evil commie writers, that might have been funny, but it's too unfocused. I don't know why Channing Tatum is in this movie at all.

[BurtReynolds]

I also never want to see a Hollywood movie about the good old days of Hollywood again.

[bart]

I can settle on bottom four pretty easily

A Serious Man

An Unserious Post

[tree_]

The communist cell of writers was the only thing I really liked about it, but they aren't in the movie much. The only time I laughed was when the cowboy guy says "so it's communists."

Outside of that, everyone else is hamming it up in the worst ways. Clooney is awful. Everything looks cheap and ugly (which I assume was on purpose, but showing Hollywood as fake and gaudy isn't very interesting these days).

Maybe if they would have concentrated on making the movie about the hero movie exec vs evil commie writers, that might have been funny, but it's too unfocused. I don't know why Channing Tatum is in this movie at all.

Part of the humor of it all is the weird choices, left turns it makes throughout. Think Big Lebowski. It's quirky. Channing Tatum's arc is quite hilarious, if you think about it. They can make a Fargo when they feel like it. But this isn't that.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

I can settle on bottom four pretty easily

A Serious Man

An Unserious Post

Yes I love this one.

[BurtReynolds]

The communist cell of writers was the only thing I really liked about it, but they aren't in the movie much. The only time I laughed was when the cowboy guy says "so it's communists."

Outside of that, everyone else is hamming it up in the worst ways. Clooney is awful. Everything looks cheap and ugly (which I assume was on purpose, but showing Hollywood as fake and gaudy isn't very interesting these days).

Maybe if they would have concentrated on making the movie about the hero movie exec vs evil commie writers, that might have been funny, but it's too unfocused. I don't know why Channing Tatum is in this movie at all.

Part of the humor of it all is the weird choices, left turns it makes throughout. Think Big Lebowski. It's quirky. Channing Tatum's arc is quite hilarious, if you think about it. They can make a Fargo when they feel like it. But this isn't that.

Don't ever compare this movie to Big Lebowski again.